The ongoing demand for the development of consumer electronics is often met by incorporating additional features into existing products. For example, an increasing number of electronic devices, such as smartphones and tablet computers, include a digital camera that adds to and/or enhances the primary functions of the electronic devices. Digital cameras are a particularly heavily used feature of current smartphones, which is supported by the significant portion of all new photos that are taken with smartphones.
A drawback of incorporating additional components and/or features into existing devices is that there is a cumulative risk of a component failure that will leave the entire device unusable or significantly less desirable from an end user perspective. Continuing the example above, a smartphone as a whole may be less useful to the end user if the digital camera integrated into the smartphone stops working as expected.
Component failure is particularly troubling when a component failure damages an electronic device as a whole. For example, a camera flash associated with a digital camera relies on an electrical surge to produce a flash of light. A suitable electrical surge is typically produced by a boost circuit included in a camera flash module that is ultimately integrated into a smartphone. Given the relatively high operational power levels, the boost circuit can damage a smartphone as a whole by sinking excessive current and/or causing a voltage spike. Even if a single current sink and/or voltage spike does not cause a failure, repeated operation of a boost circuit may eventually lead to failure as components deteriorate after repeated cycles of electrical surges and the undesired aftereffects.